Restoration of resaca wetlands and associated wet prairie habitats at Palo Alto Battlefield National Historic Site

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Abstract

Cultivation and drainage projects associated with livestock production have substantially
disturbed resaca wetlands and wet prairie habitats in southern Texas. As a consequence
of the anthropogenic disturbances, the area of these wetlands has been reduced and the
ecological integrity of the remaining wetlands has been compromised. The goal of this
study was to explore effective strategies for ecological restoration of coastal prairie and
resaca ecosystems in south Texas and provide restoration recommendations to the
National Park Service at Palo Alto Battlefield National Historic Site (NHS). Field
experiments were conducted to evaluate the effectiveness of different approaches for
restoring Spartina spartinae on disturbed saline flats. A resaca hydrologic study was
initiated to evaluate the groundwater hydrology in disturbed versus undisturbed resaca
wetlands and explore potential restoration strategies. Transplanting S. spartinae in the
fall season was more successful (80% survivability) than seeding (0% initial
establishment), spring transplanting (0% survival), spring and fall mechanical
transplanting (0% and 6% survivability, respectively). Soil disturbance significantly
affected (p < 0.05) survival of transplanted tillers and basal diameter of both the bare root and container-grown transplants in the fall manual treatments. The initial
hydrologic study of the resaca wetlands found that vegetation rooting zone hydrology
was likely dependent on surface water rather than groundwater. These findings suggest
that strategies that restore surface hydrologic regimes will likely restore the ecosystem
structure and function of disturbed resacas. Manually transplanting bare-root stock of S.
spartinae in the late fall season without soil disturbance will increase the likelihood of
successful saline flat restoration.